by Oliver, Nick
I shifted into drive and drove around the building toward the highway headed south. The Zombies out front turned at the new noise and started shuffling after me, but there was no chance in hell they’d catch up with me now.
The roads were pretty congested. I still hadn’t seen another person since I left the warehouse, and this road was no different. My spirits were raised a bit though. I was beginning to notice familiar territory after a while. I was still a good five or six hours away from home in good driving conditions, but only driving twenty or thirty miles an hour to avoid all the abandoned vehicles and corpses took a lot of time.
I tried to figure out how long it would take, but every time the numbers would get close I’d think of her face, her little half smirk that she made when she was happy, or the full blown smile right after she finished laughing. I just kept driving down the congested roads, focused on my goal.
I reached an exit that I needed to take to get on another road which was the quickest route to Grovemont. But when I drove down it, the entrance to the other road had a huge bus blocking the entire thing. I put the station wagon in park and thought about what to do. I’d never driven a bus before, and who knew if there was anyone, or for that matter anything, on board that could be a threat. I didn’t know where the next exit went, or how to get home from there, let alone how long it could take for me to figure it out and get back on track.
“Fuck it,” I thought out loud. At this point, taking risks was a part of life now, and I needed to accept that. I shut off the station wagon to save gas, and left most of my supplies in the car, taking only my pistol and bat. The pistol I tucked in the waistband of my jeans behind my back, and the bat I kept in my hands.
There wasn’t any movement inside the bus as far as I could see, which was a good sign. Those things never stopped moving, especially when there was something else moving near them. The front tire on the bus was blown, with the bare rim on the road. The door on the side of the bus was slightly ajar, and it didn’t take much strength to push it all the way open.
The driver’s seat was empty of course. I didn’t expect there to be a driver sitting there waving me aboard. I heard an odd sound, like a wet smacking. I climbed the six steps of the bus to reach the seating area. I’m not sure how disgusted I was staring at what I saw. I’d seen a lot of death and horror over the last few weeks, but this had to take the cake for gruesome.
There were only five or six of them as far as I could tell, but they were all hunched over what used to be a person. They’d bit and ripped through the skin and muscle on the torso so much that I could see the ribcage and hip bones. I couldn’t have been more than five feet away, but none of them even noticed me standing there.
I wasn’t going to take any chances. I took them all out one at a time, smashing their heads in with my bat. I felt sorry for the poor bastard they’d ripped apart. Maybe if I’d gotten here a little sooner I could have saved him, or her. To be honest I couldn’t tell what it was at this point. I ignored that thought real quick. I wasn’t Superman, and I couldn’t save everyone. For a second it had green eyes. I blinked to find them an unnatural yellow.
I took two steps away from the pile of corpses before I turned back. The one they’d been feeding on didn’t have much of a face left. Most of the skull was visible, but the brain was intact as far as I could tell. I was just about to smash its head in, but stopped. I rationalized that it was pointless. There wasn’t enough muscle mass left in that body to twitch a finger, let alone get up and attack someone.
The keys were still in the ignition of the bus. I turned it on, but before I even tried to move the bus anywhere I noticed that a pickup truck was turned over on its side right in front of the bus. I shifted the bus into the first gear and hit the gas pedal. The bus lurched and squealed as the bare rim scraped along on the concrete. The bus pushed the truck forward ever so slightly making an awful grinding noise as metal scraped against metal and concrete. I gave it more gas, shoving the truck out of the way. It seemed to take forever, but finally I’d made enough room to get the station wagon past.
I shut off the bus and got up just in time to see the partially devoured person grab my ankle. He’d crawled through the bloody mess of his own fluids and across the bus, dragging his useless lower half behind him. I pulled my pistol and shot him in the head just as he was pulling his head toward my calf. What sympathy I did have was gone in that instant. Granted it wasn’t its fault. It was dead, but its body wasn’t.
I hopped off the bus and got back in the station wagon. It just barely squeezed passed the bus, scrapping one side on the wall and the other on the bus, but I made it through. Compared to the road I was just on, this one was relatively clear of other vehicles, so even though the speed limit was labeled as forty miles an hour I was doing an easy seventy, only slowing to go around an abandoned vehicle, fallen light pole, or some other obstacle. I didn’t have much to do on the road but think. The radio was dead, and there were no CD’s anywhere, and the station wagon didn’t have an auxiliary port for my mp3 player. Luckily, I’d never been one to get bored easily, as long as I had something to ponder over.
It’s funny how in only a few weeks what would have been considered mass destruction before was now the norm. I didn’t look at a crashed car and wonder if it was the driver’s fault, or someone else’s. I didn’t look at the charred remains of a building and wonder how the fire started. All I did was look at what lie beyond those things, or how I could get around them, like I was in some kind of sadistic maze.
So much had changed in relatively no time. Even I had changed. I’d killed so many people since I’d left Ohio. I wasn’t even sure how many. I didn’t mean the undead. I didn’t feel bad about those, but the living people, that felt different. I kept telling myself it was self defense, me or them. The guy I left on the ground after he tried to steal my dad’s truck from me. I didn’t have to pound him so bad, there was no chance he could have gotten up in time to get away from the zombies, and they were too close. The ones in the warehouse, I wasn’t even sure how many I killed there, four, five? I put it to the back of my mind. Those were necessary. They wouldn’t have hesitated to kill me had I not got them first, and I knew that.
I tried not to think about it. I passed a sign that said Orlando was five miles away, and I needed to be ready for whatever the city was about to throw at me.
Chapter Nine: Last Leg
10:00 AM, July 4
I was coming close to Orlando, which made me a bit nervous. I’d managed to avoid major cities since I left Cleveland, but the fastest route around Orlando would take me at least another hour and a half, and I didn’t want to get stuck in the dark so close to home, I just wanted to get there. I was going directly through the city on Interstate 4. I hoped that because it was raised above the ground through the city that it wouldn’t be too congested. The road began to rise above the ground as I approached the city, avoiding a few parallel roads, with exits every mile or so leading to the ground level.
I could see that they had attempted to build a similar wall system to the one they were building around Cleveland when I was leaving, but this wall had gaps, making it obvious that the attempt to save the city had failed. There were piles of bodies where it looked like they had hoards of those things swarming them where it wasn’t finished. Though, I did notice that one building in particular, the tallest building in Orlando, the SunTrust center, had a few modifications to it. It looked like they had blocked off the streets around it, with what had to be thousands of zombies surrounding the walls, making the tower look like a castle with a moat. I was too far away to see if the people inside the walls were alive or not, but who knows, maybe they had managed to survive.
The road ahead was packed full of too many cars to keep driving the station wagon, so I gathered my stuff and abandoned it. I was a little disappointed. It did have a good quarter tank worth of gas left in it. Rather than just leaving it and forgetting it, I marked on my map where it was, and hid the key
back in the magnet holder I found it in. If for whatever reason I needed to go north again, at least I knew where one reliable vehicle was.
The zombies in most of the vehicles and lying in the street were already taken out, with clean holes through their heads, either in the temple or between the eyes. I should have been relieved that most of them were dead, but all it did was make me nervous. I’d rather see them coming than have a false sense of security. The cars were getting too close together for me to squeeze between without snagging either my clothes or my backpack on something, and I didn’t want a straggler to reach out and grab me or bite me, so I climbed onto the hood of a convertible, and started walking along the tops of the cars.
I was nearing an exit when I saw movement ahead. I ducked down in the bed of a truck, after a few seconds I took a quick peek. It wasn’t zombies. There were four of them, and they were decked out in full camouflage with backpacks and satchels. Only one of them had a gun drawn that I could see, but if they were soldiers then they’d most definitely be armed in some way. I squatted back down into the bed of the truck and rolled off the back. They were coming right toward me. Even though they were military as far as I could tell, I still wasn’t in the mood to say hello, especially after the other day at that warehouse. Who knew if they hadn’t killed for those outfits, or if they had gone over the deep end?
I kept a close eye on them, trying not to be noticed. They approached slowly, not necessarily toward me, but down the road toward the direction I just came from. They were getting closer. I tried to stay quiet, breathing slowly, waiting for them to pass so I could slip by. They hadn’t noticed me as far as I could tell, but I could hear their footsteps they were so close. I could feel the hairs on my neck stand up. Its one thing to watch a suspenseful movie, not knowing what’s going to happen next, but knowing something horrible might happen in real life?
It felt like I was lying there for hours, but it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. Although I was perfectly content with waiting for them to pass, a hand grabbed my shoulder. I turned to see a zombie reaching out of the sliding back window of the truck cab. I grabbed its wrist but it was making a lot of noise, the soldiers were probably close enough to hear the ruckus we were making.
I fought it as best I could without using a gun, it had managed to squirm itself halfway out of the cab and into the bed. I was holding it by the neck, keeping its snapping jaws away from me. All my attention was on the Zombie for obvious reasons when I heard a gunshot and blood sprayed from its head.
I heard a gun cock, and I yelled out as loud as I could “Don’t fire! I’m not infected!”
“Prove it!” I heard one of them yell, “You have two seconds before I blow your brains next to your pal’s there.”
I stood up as fast as I could, leaving my pistol and backpack lying in the truck. My arms were spread out, “Check me, no bites!”
The guy with the rifle had it trained on me. His eyes filled with either hatred or fear, I couldn’t tell. For half a second I thought they were green, but at this distance, it was just that face. It wouldn’t go away, even now.
The other soldiers stared at me, all of them were distrusting but one, he placed his hand on the barrel of the gun aimed at me. “He’s not dead yet, infected or not, let him talk.”
I left my guns and backpack in the truck as I climbed out, “Check me for bites, I’m clean.”
The guy who had in all likelihood saved my life introduced himself, “I’m Sergeant Tony, and if you don’t mind, we need to search you for bites, everywhere.”
I took my jacket, shirt, and pants off, leaving only my underwear on. I spun around showing them that I had no bites on me. “Satisfied? I mean I have a few scratches, but none of those things bit me, I’ve been careful.”
The Sergeant sighed, looked down for a second then back up at me, “Everywhere, if you don’t mind.”
It took me a second to realize what he meant. Of course I was embarrassed, but I didn’t want to die, so I dropped my underwear. All the soldiers dropped their eyes for a second then looked back up at me. A couple of them smirked. One of them chuckled out loud.
“How about any of you strip down in front of me and we’ll see what’s so damn funny?” I challenged the soldiers in front of me. The one who laughed cleared his throat and looked away. “That’s what I thought. Can I put my pants back on now please?”
The Sergeant nodded, I saw his lips curl a bit into a smirk, “You’re clean.” He pointed to the other soldiers, “This is Corporal Glenn, Private Laud, and Private Olson.”
“My name is Sam. Nice to meet you guys,” I said, as I squatted down to grab my underwear and pants.
I was pulling my shirt over my head when Private Laud asked me, “Where’s the rest of your group?”
“I don’t have a group,” I responded. “I’m trying to get to my friends. I’ve been travelling on my own for about a week now.”
“You’re out here alone?” Corporal Glenn asked in disbelief.
“Yeah,” I answered, “all by my lonesome.”
He looked like he was about to ask me another question when Private Olson called out to us, “We got Ghouls coming from the south Sarg. I suggest we move along.”
“Ghouls?” I asked, though I realized I knew what the answer was the second I asked, but at that point I’d already asked.
“The walking dead of course. What do you call them?” Corporal Glenn asked. “Its way beyond sick people at this point. They’re dead, and there aren’t a whole lot of words to describe that.”
“I figured as much, I guess I’ve been calling them Zombies for a few days,” I said as I put my jacket back on. “I shot one of them in the chest with buckshot at point blank range. Sure he staggered, but the son of a bitch kept coming.”
“They do have that habit don’t they?” Private Laud said, “I saw one the other day that was missing everything from his chest down and still wouldn’t stop crawling toward me.”
“Not to break up this stimulating conversation, but we’ve got work to do.” Sergeant Tony started walking up to me, “We have to be at the outpost in thirty minutes.”
I grabbed my backpack and shotgun out of the bed of the truck. When I turned around the Sergeant was right in front of me. “Sergeant, listen. I’ve got to get moving myself. I’ve got people west of here and I need to see if they are okay.”
“We’re heading that way anyhow. You can just follow us.” He looked down at my shotgun, “Got any ammo for that thing?”
I stared at him for a second. He looked trustworthy enough, but I was still a bit hesitant to tell him everything. “I’ve got a few shells.”
He just smirked, “Listen kid, I’m not gonna steal your ammo, I just don’t want to have to cover your ass. I’m assuming you know how to handle yourself with that thing.”
“I didn’t get here on my good intensions. That’s for sure,” I answered truthfully, gaining a bit of respect for the man. He was a straight shooter.
“Alright, then,” he pulled a can of dip out and slid a chunk into his lip. “You’re with us until we reach the outpost, then we can talk about what to do from there.”
I nodded, realizing I didn’t have much of a choice, “Let’s do it.”
We started back the way I came, “Not to question you guys, but if we’re going to the west side of the city, then why are we heading south?” I’d been to Orlando dozens of times over the years and knew the streets well enough, but to be fair, not with the dead roaming them.
“Good luck with that,” Private Laud shot back. “The streets are covered with those things directly west. We have to go around them.”
“Some are more congested than others,” Private Olson added, “This is the safest route to the outpost on the western side of the city. We can’t lead the hordes to any of the outposts we have throughout the city, so we take long routes.”
“How far is that?” I asked. “No offense, but I don’t really want to spend too much time here paling a
round if I don’t have to.”
“Our standing orders are to take any uninfected civilians back to the Tower,” Sergeant Tony responded. “We need as many people as we can get.”
“Are you saying I’m not allowed to leave?” I asked him frankly.
He stopped for a second, and spit to his side. “I don’t make the orders I just follow them, even if they are a week old.”
“A week old?” I asked. “You haven’t gotten any orders for a week? What happened to the chain of command?”
He looked over to the other soldiers. “Corporal, move ahead and check the exit, make sure it’s clear. We’ll be right behind you.”
Sergeant Tony and I stopped walking, while the other soldiers went off ahead of us. When Tony looked back at me his face was grimaced. “Look I’m not gonna lie, the East Coast is messed up. We got hit a lot harder with this virus than the rest of the country. Command sent us in as a last ditch effort to slow it down while they got the important people out.”
I almost said I didn’t believe it, but truthfully I did. “So they just left us here to fend for ourselves?”
“Yep,” he nodded. “We were told to save as many as we could, then to wait it out, period. We have a Captain back at the Tower. He tries to rationalize it, that we’ll see our troops marching down the streets any day now, but I’ve read the reports. Everything east of the Rockies is a warzone.”
He took out the chunk of chewing tobacco he had behind his lip and threw it on the ground. “They say they have everything under control to the West of the Rockies, that they caught it soon enough, but its all bullshit to keep the masses calm, if you ask me.”
I had questions sure, but this wasn’t the time to ask them. Private Laud was waving us over, so we started walking toward them. “I’ve traveled almost a thousand miles in the last week and I’ve seen a lot of shit, both dead and alive. I’d always considered myself an optimist, but after what I’ve seen, we’re not bouncing back from this any time soon.”